PISCATAWAY — Students at Piscataway High School participate in coed physical education in this photo from Oct. 18, 1976.

Title IX, a portion of the Education Amendments of 1972, was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on June 23, 1972. The law stated that “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” Final regulations on how the law would be enforced were not published by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare until 1975, according to Welch Suggs in “A Place on the Team.”

The following school year saw one of the offshoots of the law, coed gym classes, become common practice in schools. Not all were in favor of the legislation. In an opinion published in the March 20, 1989, issue of the New York Times, educators Kathleen and Edward Wallace stated that they felt the legislation, “While laudable in theory and promoting female interscholastic athletics, has discouraged, in practice, many high schoolers from fully participating (in physical education) because of mixing the sexes at a physically and emotionally awkward age.”

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